I think the best option for the patient is to wait until Adobe announces support for cards in the GTX 400 series, like the GTX 480 or 470. They are much faster cards and at least the 480 will probably be supported in a few weeks via some sort of an update, but no one knows for sure when or which cards will get support.

For now as I mentioned in another thread I bought a used GTX 285 off ebay. The buy now price for these cards seems to range between $220 and $275 many with free shipping. With the GTX 470 and 480 cards now available, a lot of folks are selling their old GTX 200 series cards. Just monitor ebay and look for a GTX 285 to go for sale at a reasonable price.

I tried getting one at or under $200 via the auction route but bidding for the auction cards seemed to rapidly climb to above buy it now levels. People just get carried away towards the end of the bidding. It happened several times that the card I was monitoring got auctioned off above the buy it now price for cards being listed by other sellers.

Probably the best option is to wait and get whichever 400 series card Adobe supports. if you are impatient like me then I would suggest buying a used 285 off ebay. New cards cost $350 or more from retailers like newegg, and the GTX285 is obsolete, being far slower than lower priced cards from ATI and the similarly priced GTX 470 from Nvidia.

David, the best advice is to determine how badly you need this performance increase now. If it is imperative you have this, then get one of the supported cards. If it is not imperative, patience may pay off much greater if you are willing to wait on making a new GPU purchase.

All the ones I've seen listed have 1GB of memory. The one I bought is an EVGA brand 285 card, and it has 1GB of Video RAM. Several brands of gtx 285 cards are still available on newegg.com as well, but they start at $350 and if you live in CA you have to pay tax. A lot to pay for an already obsolete card.

Most GTX 285's sold have 1GB of RAM. Some had more than 1GB but those were rare. I doubt the extra RAM helps much in this application. newegg has the gtx 285's in stock still, and charge $350 for them rather than the $500 you found elsewhere.

But the 285 is an old card, and people are selling them on ebay. New listings pop up daily, just keep an eye out and when one goes low enough grab it. Or better still, wait and see what GTX 400 series cards are supported. If we are lucky Adobe will support the GTX 470 which costs about $350 new right now, and should drop even lower after a few weeks (when these cards first hit the market they are always overpriced).

There's no guarantee Adobe will support the 470 though, it's possible they will do the same thing with these 400 series that they did with the 200 series, supporting only the top of the line single GPU card, or who knows maybe only the Quadro series from now on but that would really upset a lot of people.